


Chelone

by De_Nugis



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-22
Updated: 2014-01-22
Packaged: 2018-01-09 16:56:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1148523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/De_Nugis/pseuds/De_Nugis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel works to untangle the case of a cursed tortoise and the mysteries of Sam's forehead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chelone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cordelia_gray](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cordelia_gray/gifts).



> Birthday fic for Cordelia Gray; spoilers through 9.10.

Castiel is interrogating a tortoise. 

The process is slow and difficult, and Castiel is trying to keep his mind on the task. Sam has settled on the bench in the central space of the warm, dimly lit Hall of Reptiles; he appears to be consulting his phone. The pattern of his forehead indicates the retrieval and processing of information, rather than one of his habitual and therefore ignorable states of distress. His elbows are on his knees, his head bent slightly over the small screen. He hasn’t spoken since Castiel stepped over the low barrier into the tortoise’s rocky habitat to address her.

Nonetheless, his presence is distracting. Castiel is used to working around Dean’s jokes and criticisms and suggestions. Somehow Sam’s silence is more intrusive.

“Maybe it’s something to do with snakes,” Sam says suddenly. Castiel breaks eye contact with the tortoise. If Sam’s silence is disruptive, his speech is more so. “You know,” Sam carries on, “double tongues, liars. That might go with how it starts, people being struck mute. And two of them were con men, of a sort. Double-tongued. Ask it if it noticed anything weird at the snake end of the hall.”

Castiel doubts it. Sam’s logic is tenuous at best, and the symptoms they are investigating progress past muteness, shutting down not the senses, but whatever it is within humans that reaches out through senses to access the world. In any case, Sam clearly misunderstands Castiel’s undertaking.

“This isn’t the same technique as impersonating one of your FBI agents,” he points out, with some regret — he enjoys the badges. “She doesn’t engage in question and answer. And I can’t access the workings her mind does follow if you interrupt. Try to be quiet. Try to be quiet more quietly, if you can. I find your presence loud.”

Sam’s forehead contracts briefly. Castiel notes the new lines, two deep vertical ones between the brows, two fainter, horizontal ones above them. It’s quite elegant, like writing, though this particular hieroglyph usually appears so fleetingly that Castiel has not yet added it to his mental dictionary. It’s easier to concentrate on Sam’s less transient states. 

“Yeah,” Sam says, “OK. Sorry. It’s just, I mean, it was Gadreel, right, who let the original snake into the original garden. He was the guy. I just thought, maybe, if we have some kind of snake thing, now, with him running around, that it might not be a coincidence.”

Castiel frowns.

“You are guessing,” he says, “proposing theories at random. It’s unlikely these incidents have anything to do with Gadreel. I’m sure Dean would have undertaken this part of the case if he’d thought there was a connection.”

Not that Dean had explained his reasoning. He’d just said “Cas, you’re with Sam.” Castiel hadn’t objected. Sam’s healing is complete, he has no further need of Castiel’s attendance, but he and Dean haven’t regained their ease with one another and Castiel hopes his presence is some help. Sam hadn’t objected either.

“Yeah, I’m sure Dean would,” says Sam, “because it’s not like Gadreel is _my_ business.” 

“No,” Castiel agrees. It’s quite true that Gadreel’s temporary occupation of Sam as vessel had little to do with Sam. Sam had never put his trust in Gadreel, as Dean had, and whatever grudge Sam bears for Gadreel’s ancient transgression is surely distant compared to Castiel’s. It’s good that Sam realizes this. Though Castiel would have thought the current configuration of his forehead indicated anger, or pain. 

Castiel sighs. Sam is hard to interpret. There are things that could better occupy Castiel’s time than that endeavor. Possibly the humans who claim to read the nature of the universe in the shells of tortoises have similar difficulties. Castiel examines the creature in front of him, the etching and bulges of her shell. It’s easy to track some traces of her experience, to note the rings of her age, but as for any further meaning, it eludes Castiel. Perhaps a prophet, like the boy Kevin, would have been equipped to try. It’s regrettable that they can’t make the experiment. 

Though there is something strange here, even if it lacks cosmic meaning.

“Sam,” says Castiel, “this tortoise is very old.”

“Tortoises live a long time, don’t they?” says Sam. “A hundred and fifty years, maybe two hundred. Maybe even older.” 

“But not,” Castiel hazards, “three thousand.” No wonder the paths in her thoughts had seemed longer, more dark and tangled, than Castiel had expected. Three thousand years is still a short time, but a significantly longer one than this creature’s mind was intended to hold. 

He waits for Sam to consult his phone, to find a millennial tortoise in the stores of human knowledge, but Sam doesn’t. He comes over to peer down at her.

“Huh,” he says. “So maybe it — she — is it. The source of whatever’s going on here. Maybe she’s some kind of tortoise monster, or a tortoise god. I think there are tortoises in Chinese lore somewhere. Probably other places, too.” 

“Her mind is not a god’s,” says Castiel, but Sam isn’t attending. He’s reading the plaque next to the tortoise’s enclosure. 

“ _Testudo graeca_ ,” he says, “so probably not Chinese. Greek. Let’s see.” He goes back to the bench, picks up his phone, tapping and running his fingers over the screen. “All right, all right. Hmm. This is interesting. Pretty late, though — a note in Servius’s commentary on the _Aeneid_. Not exactly a mythological celebrity. Some woman named Chelone. She refused Juno and Jupiter’s wedding invitation, decided to stay at home. Mercury came along, threw her house in the river, turned her into a tortoise, made her carry her house, or maybe just the roof, hmm, on her back as punishment. Harsh.”

“The gods often are,” says Castiel. Much like God. They pass their sentences on the world and walk away. He turns his attention back to the tortoise. Now that he knows what he’s looking for it’s easier to see the outlines of the curse that shapes her nature. Sam’s voice is running on in the background, but for the moment it isn’t scraping along Castiel’s nerves, as it sometimes does. It’s almost soothing. Though Castiel scarcely needs enlightenment on Latin grammar.

“. . . oh, wait, there’s another reading, anyway, _impatientis linguae_ , so, yeah, _impotens linguae_ definitely as in ‘uncontrolled in speech’. Though it doesn’t make any difference, really. Either she starts out mute and becomes a mute animal or she mouths off and becomes a mute animal. And there’s Mercury, too, maybe she has it in for silver tongues. And then I guess trapped in a house, and for her her house is her body. People trapped in their bodies. Makes sense, kind of. What d’you think, Cas? Is this some revenge thing?”

“Not exactly,” says Castiel. “She has lost the sense of herself long ago. Or perhaps it was taken from her. What’s happening isn’t something she’s choosing to do. It’s only the echo of what was done to her.”

“So she’s like a ghost, sort of,” says Sam. “But a ghost trapped in a live body.”

“Close enough,” says Castiel.

“Can you reason with her?” asks Sam. “Tell her she’s hurting people, get her to back down?”

“No,” says Castiel. “She isn’t human. Not any more. As I told you. The reverberations of her curse are shaped by her anger, perhaps, but not by her choice.”

“Can you try?” says Sam.

“It would be useless,” says Castiel.

Sam’s lips compress in a hard line.

“Then we gank her,” he says. “Act of mercy for everyone.” He’s taking out salt, matches, a knife. 

“Do you think that proportionate?” asks Castiel. “She hasn’t taken lives.” As Castiel understands it, this is how Dean and Sam measure necessity in these cases.

“She hasn’t killed anyone,” corrects Sam. “Doesn’t mean she hasn’t taken lives. People stuck in their heads, locked down, that’s lives. If there’s no way she can stop hurting people, it’s what we’ve got to do. For her as much as the rest. Better have an end than be, be stuck like this, not even herself. In her own head. In her own damn body.”

Maybe Sam is right. Perhaps this is a mercy to everyone. It’s a mercy Castiel — and surely Sam, too — has craved at times. Castiel steps back. Sam is muttering to himself again.

“I’m not burning her alive, anyway, fuck that. It should work the other way. Break her connection to the body, then burn what was holding her. Damn it.” He scatters a little salt over the tortoise. She looks unimpressed. 

“Huh,” says Sam. He rests a hand on her shell. She cranes her wrinkled neck to peer at him. She hasn’t withdrawn her head. Perhaps she sees no threat from Sam. Or perhaps she sees it and welcomes it. 

Sam smiles ruefully at Castiel.

“Stupid, isn’t it?” he says. “This is actually easier when they look human. Don’t know what that says about me.”

The tortoise is beautiful. It’s natural that Sam feels regret. As Castiel does, looking at the lines of years on her shell, the notched arches of distress on Sam’s forehead. Castiel has been human, but he still can’t tell whether or not this thing Sam feels makes Sam less so. He says nothing. Sam shuts his eyes and drives the knife against her throat where it vanishes into the shell. 

Nothing happens. Sam tries again, but the knife skids as if he’d turned it against ice or stone. The tortoise lumbers forward a few steps under Sam’s hand and bites at a leaf. 

Sam is breathing hard, as though there had been a fight. Castiel thinks that he and Sam should both have foreseen this. She is an object of divine punishment, as they are. It’s not going to be that easy. 

“Damn,” says Sam. “I guess it makes sense. What’s a curse if you get to die?”

“No doubt that’s the intention,” says Castiel, “a perpetual lesson. An inescapable allegory. It is an uncomfortable existence, to live as a statement of someone’s power.”

Sam shrugs tired assent.

“I guess we try overkill,” he says. “Can you, like, smite her, Cas?”

“I can try,” says Castiel. “Cover your eyes.”

He isn’t surprised or altogether sorry to fail. 

Sam prods the charred circle of ground the tortoise is slowly making her way out of.

“Figures,” he says. “Well, I guess it’s on to Plan B. You got any ideas?” Castiel notices that Sam expresses no wish to call and consult Dean. Not that Dean will have any suggestions beyond the obvious.

“Take her away with us,” says Castiel. “So far, neither of us has been affected. Though if her curse affects the unduly persuasive it might be as well to keep her away from Dean. After that — surely you have some means of containment.”

Sam nods absently.

“Yeah,” he says. “Dad had curse boxes. We’ve still got some in storage. And there are more at the bunker. Though most of them have cursed crap in them. We could put her in one, bury it, I guess, or drop it in the sea. We can’t just let her loose, even on a desert island or something. There’s nowhere that’s guaranteed no humans ever. Damn it.”

He turns abruptly, kicks at the thick plates of glass surrounding the enclosure so hard long cracks radiate out, though the glass doesn’t break.

“All over again. We’re doing it to her all over again. Fuck. She’s already in a box, Cas. She _is_ a box. So we take her away and put her in a box.”

Castiel opens his mouth to tell Sam that there is nothing else they can do. Something Sam should surely know. Sam is a hunter. And he has done many worse things. Even a few minutes ago he’d been willing to cut the tortoise’s throat, to let Castiel burn her out from within.

But perhaps there is an alternative. 

“Wait,” says Castiel. 

It would be some trouble. It will not be possible, unless Castiel wins his war. And in any case it will make very little difference. The tortoise is eyeing him, her eye small in her wrinkled face. Very little difference, but not none. Within the long skein of years in her mind Castiel had fingered strands of sunlight, long days drowsing on hot sand, the cool green juice of leaves. And among these he can glimpse a few sparse human memories: olive harvest and cheese-making and a rhythmic Greek phrase, a song set to the shuttling of a loom. It would be a pity to crush that with the slow, pressured dark under earth or sea, if it isn’t necessary. 

“There are places in heaven where a physical body can exist,” he says to Sam. “Pockets of materiality. If I succeed — if it proves possible to retake Heaven — then I can bring her to one of those. She can’t do harm there. I can maintain an environment for her.” Sand, thistles, rocks and sun and a few small pools. An olive tree, maybe. Castiel has always found their intricate shapes pleasing, as this creature once did. “If you wish, I can take charge of her for now. I think I can keep her away from humans until the current battles are decided.”

Castiel instantly regrets his words. It’s a small obligation, true, but one that could last a very long time. Forever. There are angels depending on Castiel, armies, he shouldn’t be distracted by a niggling favor he owes a formerly human tortoise, or by whatever he may conceive he owes Sam Winchester. He doesn’t need another reason to not lose the fights ahead of him. Sam will forget the matter within months. He is self-absorbed, tangled in his own curse, his brother, his own brief, unattainable life and death.

But for now Sam’s forehead is smoothing into a calm pattern Castiel rarely sees, like the faint, even ripples in water or desert sand. The symmetry is something Castiel appreciates, something he isn’t sorry to have facilitated.

“Really?” Sam says, “That, uh, that’d be great, if you can do that.” He picks up the tortoise — Chelone — and passes her to Castiel, a slight but definite weight. Castiel runs his hand again over the lines and ridges of her shell. “You hear that?” Sam says to her, “Cas is gonna take care of you. He’ll take you somewhere safe, when he can, somewhere you can get a little peace, not cause damage. It’s the best we can do. Thank you, Cas,” he adds.

“You’re welcome, Sam,” says Castiel. He finds he means it.


End file.
